Market Days
I think the highlight of the trip to Cameroon was the different market towns each day of the week. They draw people from the outlying areas so you get to see a nice variety of the locals with their local traditions and goods. Since they are dominated by the women, I also got to see lots or pretty women! Each market is quite different because of the difference in tribes, but they all follow a similar plan of chaos (!) with stalls or areas where food (vegetables, fruits, spices, dry/fresh fish, beer, meats and other), household goods, bicycle repair, hardware, clothing and trinkets are sold. The markets ramble through the streets (picture totally chaotic dirt paths) between the homes and other buildings in the host village. They start early morning and go until sunset. The configuration of the markets, the people and their clothes and the goods they sell make for an amazing sight and I don’t think we tired of any of them.
The More market is one of the biggest attracting many different tribes from Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. My Bradt Guide to Cameroon says there is suppose to be “bare-breasted Kirdi mountain women”, but I did not see any. I would certainly have noticed. It is funny, though, to be in a place where you can see women in 100% covering Muslim clothes and then see a woman walking down the road with only a small skirt on. That would probably be a death sentence in the countries I am about to visit, but in Cameroon, it all seems to flow nicely together. The world could learn a lot from these Northern Cameroonians. This market had a lot of animals for trade/sale including donkeys, goats and cattle. I decided not to buy a goat. By the way, “my” goat in Meru is an amazing stud. He is twice the size that I saw him in November and he has fathered many kids including the one that was born the night we were there. I was able to perch myself on a porch in the middle of this market and shoot away without anyone being bothered. The photos show the best part of this market – unbelievable colors.
The Maga market is where we saw all of the tall Chadian people before heading into Chad ourselves. I tried two unusual things at this market. First, I ate a “nut” that had previously been eaten by an elephant. Picture that for a minute. Yes, the nut was picked by the elephant, digested poorly as elephants do and then deposited. Yes, deposited in the normal manner. The locals pick through the dung and collect the “roasted” nuts. It tasted like caramel to me and my notes list it as “elephant shit nut”. I also tried kola nut for the first time. This is the infamous kola in Coca-Cola. I chewed the cola leaves in South America and now I chewed kola nuts in Africa on top of drinking the end product just about everywhere I go. The kola nut is chewed to extract the juices which are supposedly a mild stimulant and a “natural Viagra”. I would say that it was the most bitter thing I have ever consumed and I did not detect any change in my system even after giving them a go a second time.
The Mokolo market featured bili-bili which is the Cameroonian homemade beer made out of millet. The bili-bili is produced and sold by women. They bring it from home in earthen containers and scoop out a calabash bowl for the drinker. I gave it a whirl and it is swill like most of the homemade beer in Africa. Not horrible, but I will take a modern, bottled beer anytime over this stuff. Seeing the women serving the bili-bili is more interesting than the actual drink itself. I can imagine drinking too much of the stuff would cause a nasara great discomfort. This market also had a lot of spices including the pili-pili (not to be confused with bili-bili) hot sauce which is famous in Africa. I saw the chilies that they make pili-pili from and then I knew why the stuff blows your brains out… it is made from the habanero chili – basically the hottest chili on earth. Some women were selling piles of dark brown sludge. I was quite interested in what it could be and Abdou told me it was made from peanuts. We bought some and it was some of the most amazing peanut butter-like substance I have ever had. For some reason it was more like taffy, though. Peanuts or ground nuts are a huge crop in Cameroon.
At all of the markets, we ate the local food served from the stalls. Mostly we ate plates of freshly cooked meats, onions, ground pepper and beignets (contribution of the French). The goats or cattle are raised in the vicinity of the village and are slaughtered in the morning and the meat is particularly good. We gorged on this mix often until both of us became very sick of too much meat. Abdou also took us to a couple of Muslim eateries – shacks with plastic mats to sit on. They served something he called couscous, but is nothing like what we call couscous and instead was very similar to a soft version of ugali – a rubbery starchy blob made from grain flour. With the couscous came a stew with a local vegetable like okra and a little goat meat. As with most local dishes, there are no utensils. Instead you break off a small portion of the blob, roll it in your fingers until you have a flat piece with a divot and then use that to scoop up the stew. I loved the stuff. Pamela did not.
The Tourou market was the wildest one of them all. The animist women from this area show up wearing calabash hats which are red in color with gold designs which denote the marital status of the woman. These women really like their bili-bili. One old woman came up and asked if I would buy her a beer and I said I would never turn down a request like that. Her friend showed up and these two characters really liked getting some beer. All the other women thought it was quite funny. I would have bought all of them beer if they had asked. We took some nice photos of this scene. When two women have not seen each other in quite a while, they share one calabash full by drinking out of it at the same time – that’s not easy. We did notice that all of the animist women were under one tree and across a dirt patch the non-animist women were enjoying bili-bili as well. There was definitely some segregation going on. We each bought a red calabash helmet to remind us of this strange place.
There are also permanent markets in the towns as well as the big once-a-week shindigs. These feature much of the same on a smaller scale, but they also have interesting services. These include doctors prescribing and selling the traditional medicines of which most are plant materials. Once again, when I asked if they had a cure for malaria, TB and HIV, they said “yes, yes, and no way”. As with most traditional groups, the blacksmith provides a very essential service. Some of the blacksmiths at these markets work around an old automobile which they use as raw materials – real recycling in action. They use bellows or a bicycle wheel attached to fins (hard to explain but amazingly ingenious) to fire the furnace where they heat the metal so that it can be worked into tools and other useful goods.
The only negative we found at the markets was also interesting. I experienced three pick-pocket attempts. The first involved us being in a very tight quarter between stalls and many people. A guy pushed through only to stop in our way. I started to say something about how stupid it was of him to push his way into our way when I realized that this was a rouse to stop us and divert our attention. I turned and I know someone was there about to get their hand in my pocket, but the quick movement messed them up. At another market, the same guy tried to pick-pocket me twice. He almost got his hand in my pocket the first time, but he had to run off when I realized what was going on. He was wearing a white shirt and when I was cut off for no reason later this same white shirt gave him away and this time I was able to actually say something. I think my main comment (since cleaned up I am sure) was that he was really stupid because if he had gotten something and I alerted the surrounding people, they probably would have doled out a quick punishment right there. One thing these jokers don’t realize is that they are pretty obvious if one is paying attention and my pants have very deep pockets as well as other anti-pick-pocket features so I seriously doubt they could ever be successful. I would say that they just added to the wonderfully entertaining experiences to be found at the markets.
Tags: Africa, cameroon
vagabondrick
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